Donald Trump's racist comments are a diversionary tactic

On Thursday, Hillary Clinton
gave a powerful speech about the grave dangers a Donald Trump
presidency could pose, such as global economic crisis and nuclear
war.

Later on Thursday, Trump
made an appallingly bigoted comment, saying that the
judge presiding over the Trump University fraud trial —
reminder: Donald Trump is a defendant in the fraud trial — could
not be impartial because he is of "Mexican heritage" and
a member of a Latino lawyers' association.

I do not believe this timing was a coincidence, or an unforced
error on Trump's part. I believe it was a deliberate tactic
designed to change the subject — one that could work.

Trump would rather have a national conversation about whether he
is a bigot than one about whether he is too erratic to be trusted
with the nuclear codes. That's because he'd rather argue about
whether he's bad for some people than about whether he's bad for
everyone.

I don't think either of these topics is great for Trump, and it's
fine to say that he's a racist and also that he can't be
trusted with nuclear weapons. But I do think that if the campaign
becomes a lot about Trump's treatment of non-whites and
Hispanics, then Trump is likely to benefit to some degree from a
backlash among white voters.

Remember: Half
of whites think that racism against whites is as big a
problem in America as racism against non-whites, according to a
2015 study from the Public Religion Research Institute. A
2011 study by Tufts psychology professors found that whites
rated anti-white racism as a significantly larger problem in
America than anti-black racism.

There are an awful lot of white voters who are sick of hearing
about bigotry, which they believe to be an overstated
problem. Trump was able to win the Republican primary
because so many are willing to write off nearly any complaint
about bigotry as "political correctness" or special
pleading.

The more this campaign becomes about Trump being bad for specific
ethnic groups, which he is, the more he will get to send a signal
to many white voters — many of whom feel displaced, even if they
do not have a valid reason for feeling that way — that he is
their man.

On the other hand, the power of the Trump-is-too-risky
attack is that it can appeal to all groups that would be
harmed by a nuclear war or a global economic crisis — which is to
say, people of all races and ethnicities. It's an argument that
can build a much broader coalition to defeat Trump.